Genre: Graphic Novel
Price: 17.95 USD
Generally I use my weekly space here to look at manga, but the nature of Comics Village gives me the opportunity to share non-manga titles I come across. This week I felt a title that has gotten some high but not necessarily broad praise deserved a little more attention, especially to those that may not consider picking it up just from the cover alone.
Mouse Guard started (and continues as) a comic book series presented in trade paperback for the first time. This first six issues complete a full tale in this meaty 200 page volume.
The premise is who has it harder in the forest than mice? The tiny creatures must organize and unionize to protect themselves against predators, including snakes, weasels and beach crabs (at the ocean). This is why the Mouse Guard was born, to protect their mice brothers, especially when in the open forest.
But a worse enemy is uncovered...a traitor within the kingdom. This is where the real tension for our three heroes in the Mouse Guard begins.
On its surface, Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 looks like a children's book. (I read the soft-cover edition, but there is also a hard-cover one as well.) But look a little closer. These are some serious-looking mice with some serious-looking weapons. You don't have to read many pages to see this is no children's storybook. The premise of the mouse kingdom is both simply and completely introduced. As I have said before, I prefer being thrown into a tale rather than getting a history lesson before strapping in, and Mouse Guard gives but one page of intro before diving in.
The curtains open wider and wider in the subsequent chapters as we follow the trail of a possible traitor among the mice. Fantastic and solemn, more then a couple mice will fall before the story is resolved, and I was a little surprised to see a comment on Amazon where the poster said this was her seven-year-old's favorite book. I think it might have freaked me out a bit when I was seven. Despite the main characters being forest creatures, this is more Watership Down than Surf's Up. In the right way. Things grow more complex as the the chapters progress, sometimes requiring a close eye on which mouse is which (fur color is a hint), but thankfully nothing is dumbed down just because these are tiny forest critters.
A review of Mouse Guard would be incomplete without talking about the gorgeous artwork that went into this book. The rich water color over pen-and-ink drawings style is nothing short of stunning. Each frame looks like a painting beautiful to hang on someones wall, and this edition had the added bonus of full-page art by author David Peterson, and also some renderings by friends and fans of the title.
Getting emotion out of the furry mouse faces is tough, and usually only comes through in the most intense situations (just like real mice, I suppose). Yet, the tiny and vast world of Mouse Guard is surprisingly easy to fall into. This feels like the beginning of a fantasy series that could literally be happening in the forest behind my house. That connection to the reader, both in story and naturally-toned artwork, makes Eisner Award-winning Mouse Guard an elephant-sized achievement.
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